As network security and visibility of data flows becomes increasingly important, the need to monitor data flows within a network device has increased. Typically, in order to monitor information related to data flows within a network device, such as a switch or router, each time a data packet associated with a data flow is received, an record in a flow table is created. As the amount of data flows that may be transmitted through network devices is quite substantial, the flow tables stored in the network devices commonly grow too large to be efficiently accessed.